East Coast Yacht Cruises

When deciding on a unique wedding event, I fell in love with this idea from the get go and their front line help Maria. She was a gem from the start and really made us feel comfortable about spending thousands of dollars. However, I can see I was terribly misled when deciding to do business with this company. Among the several of unexpected failures, I Have made attempts to contact the President who blatantly took my money, unresolved the mistakes his company made, and I have never heard from him again!
My boat was late with no prior notice of the delay, therefore all my guests saw the groom and myself prior to the wedding ceremony.(Not a major concern, but as every bride knows, the wedding dress reveal is important!)
There was no one to greet my guests, no signs for the guests to know where to go, which only added to the confusion, on top of boat personal going to the wrong entrance to begin with which delayed the boat even more.
No one helped transport the elderly and handicap up the boat or stairs; they were simply left to fend for themselves unassisted until one of my groomsmen was called down to help. Not very good treatment in my book.
30 min prior to my «grand entrance,» since everyone had already seen me because the boat was late, I was told the elevator did not fully function to the top deck where the ceremony was taking place. We counted on this for both my elderly guests and myself.
While the ceremony was nice, there were not enough seats for the amount of people that were attending. For a company to tell me that a ship can accommodate for X amount of people I do not expect to see half of my guests standing in the scorching heat of a July Ceremony.
The floor plan given to me weeks prior was completely different then what was set up. As a result both of our parents table and bridesmaid tables were as far away from our sweetheart table as possible, and guests with sensitive hearing were closest to the sound system. This is NOT how I intended our seating arrangements to be.
The «professional» wait staff was in black jeans and sneakers. At a function such as this, I would NOT consider that appropriate attire. The staff left their personal belongings mixed in with the guests items. It seemed a bit confusing for my guests at the end of the night.
FINALLY, to have a member of the boat staff openly use PROFANITY (f-​word) in front of my guests is completely UNNACCEPTABLE!!! We paid a lot of money to have an enjoyable experience for our guests, some which were first timers to NYC and flew in from miles away.
When I brought this to the owners attention he did not sound surprised. In fact he openly admitted to this happening before! To risk subjecting people to this is not only distasteful but appalling! I do not pay for disrespect and have yet to see any sort of compensation for this experience.
I truly feel based on what my husband and I were promised and what we got are two very different levels of «value.» We will never use or recommend this company to anyone we know and even discourage people we don’t know.

Two thumbs way way up for Tom, Lorri, Brittany and all those at East Coast Yacht Cruises.
Planned a birthday surprise, with catering, open bar and boarded the Calypso. It was a pretty smooth ride and good thing, as some of us are prone to seasickness.
Brittany was on-​board with us and was extremely attentive and all of us loved her. She kept the drinks and food coming.
Speaking of food — wow how we were surprised. The food was paced well (in our family, that means quickly) and we even ordered seconds on items that were just way too delicious. We were so full we couldn’t actually even eat the chicken and potato gratin entrée, which they offered to pack for us. We got home and of course we nibbled on the food. DAMN it was delicious — I don’t think I’ve ever had chicken as yummy, delish and well-​seasoned.
We even brought along our own cake, which got destroyed in transit. The chef saw it and immediately offered to help fix it. Fix he did! He was able to put it back together and looked virtually seamless! Love.
CHEF — if you’re reading this, message me! I want you to be our private chef for our next big occasion!

Ever wanted a wedding reception with a view? How about a mobile venue? Then consider the idea of throwing a party on one of the boats from the East Coast Yacht Cruises.
I attended a wedding reception on one of their yachts last year. The boat was spacious, though hardly glamorous, and was parked at the edge of South Street Seaport. Prior to boarding it gave a lot of the out of town guests an opportunity to take in the sights of downtown Manhattan and a fantastic view of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The boat we boarded had three accessible levels to the public: (1) a lobby that doubles as a cocktail/​lounge spot where a large bar is located, (2) a dining area in the lower level of the ship, and (3) a rooftop area, the very top of the ship.
The money spot for me is the roof top. Up there was the most room to roam along with the best views of the five boroughs and New Jersey. Don’t worry about missing the statue of liberty, the ship will pass it again at some point.
The bar area /​lounge area is going to feel crowded if there are more than 200 in the room. The cocktail hour featured some awesome Hors d’oeuvres and a delicious pasta and seafood buffet. There wasn’t much elbow room to mingle when crowded and nowhere to sit. Hence, choose the bar where you can score a few drinks and have a place to set your food down. Other things worth noting is the cocktails were all very strong and the only bathrooms on the ship are located here.
The dining floor felt a tad cramped but was able to hold in a good amount of people. The dance floor is tiny and at the foot of the stairs. With stairs facing the front of the room and the center of the dance floor, there were no subtle exits to the bathroom or the bar. But in the end, the bride and groom were all smiles and the catered wedding food was quite good. Service did a good job in dealing with the rowdy guests and made some killer drinks to boot.
But unfortunately, not everything was as perfect as we had hoped. They cut the cocktail hour early and managed to park the boat 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Rushing some of the guests out by pulling off chair covers was not the classiest thing to do. The worst thing was the misspelling of the bride’s name on an ice sculpture, one that was prominently displayed for all to see.
To error is human, but few mistakes are forgiven on a most momentous occasion. I’m sure I would be happy to party on a yacht like this in the future, just not for my own special day.
Just beware the ship will bobble a tad due to water turbulence. Beware of seasickness, it’s even worse when there’s open bar.